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Friday, August 31, 2012

A Social Network OOPS!

Will
the Real Sarah Palin Please Stand Up

Call it what you will – name stealing, brandjacking,
ID theft, cybersquatting – whatever the name, the potential damage that the
social media identity theft can cause to your brand reputation is staggering
... and it can happen to anybody.

Politics and
personalities aside, you don’t want somebody else claiming a key social media
presence from you ... like what happened to Sarah Palin on Twitter:

At least this was not a malicious attack; the situation
for Paul Krugman, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times wasn’t as “nice”. He
writes about his social media identity being stolen on Google+:

“Well, this is interesting. I hear that the
not-so-good people at National Review are attacking me over something I said on
my Google+ page. Except, I don’t have a Google+ page.This is the third incident
I’m aware of — there may well be more — in which people are claiming to be me.
There was also my nonexistent connection with academia.edu, and at least one
web opinion piece by someone claiming to be me (and sounding not at all like
me).”

There’s
an important lesson to be learned: Even if you can’t make time to start growing
your business today via social media – at least take a few minutes to protect your name/business/brand.

How?
Start filling out profiles featuring your personal/brand/company name. Start
with the biggies like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (top locations for
business profiles: http://goo.gl/t0cSV;
top
locations for personal profiles:http://goo.gl/w2auz)
and then make a time commitment
to doing one or two sign ups a day, it’ll be worth the effort.

If you’re
time-strapped or if you want to get it done right away, here is an inexpensive
service that will quickly secure your name/brand on 300 social media sites: www.IdentityTheftProtectionFrom.com.